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"The odds of this are just so incredibly low... It would perfectly fit your explanation though." Sounds like someone used Maximum Likelihood instead of Maximum
by wfunction 14y ago
"The odds of this are just so incredibly low... It would perfectly fit your explanation though."
Sounds like someone used Maximum Likelihood instead of Maximum A Posteriori.
- lucb1e 14y agoCould you dumb it down? :) What means "maximum a posteriori" and how does it differ from maximum likelihood?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- wfunction 14y agoIt means you tried to find the cause that makes the effect most likely, rather than the most likely cause given the effect. The two are only equivalent if what you know a priori is that all causes are equally likely. In this case they aren't, so a MAP estimate would still give a very low probability to an actual collision, whereas ML doesn't care about the probability of a collision itself -- merely the probability of what it causes. :)
- bobbydavid 14y agoOn the other hand, you have Bayesian probability: even if it looks 99% like Aliens have landed in front yard, you would still be validly assuming it's your neighbors with flashlights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability Put simply, you multiply the "a posteriori probability" (i.e. how much it "looks" like it happened) by the original probability (how likely it is to happen).